Embraced Body Announces How We Move Program
Embraced Body, the Disability Justice and inclusive arts organization founded by artist and Disability Justice consultant India Harville in 2016, announces the application period for its new How We Move program. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, How We Move is a dance intensive created for and by multiply marginalized Disabled artists from across the U.S.; the program centers agency, multiplicity, interdependence, and creative power. Applications for the 2025 pilot program are open through October 31, 2024.
“Disabled dance challenges conventional understandings of movement and form and forges its own narrative, placing disability as a rich and layered aesthetic unto itself. Disabled dance builds its community of practice around the truths inherent in intersectional bodies and identities,” shared India Harville, Embraced Body Founder & Executive Director. “Building space for this rich collaboration is not simply about addressing one form of access or another, but creating multi-faceted programs where flexible, adaptable creation and partnership can take place — and where spaces are created specifically by and for multiply marginalized artists. This is what we are creating with How We Move.”
The How We Move Program centers on Disabled, multiply marginalized (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, women) dancers. The inaugural program will welcome six artists and will include two virtual weekend gatherings, followed by a 10-day in-person intensive in New York City (June 2025), and culminating in a final virtual weekend. This hybrid gathering format intends to provide multiple access points to Disabled dance artists wishing to build and expand cross-disability community.
The in-person intensive will include somatic/movement/dance workshops; each participant will have an opportunity to lead a workshop and will receive support to ensure their workshop is accessible for all attendees. The intensive will also include space to build power together towards a transformation of the colonial, eugenicist, and ableist lineages still present in the dance field. This intensive will provide a rigorous access framework, allowing cross-disability artists from across the country the opportunity to come together, create, learn from one another, and cultivate opportunities.
How We Move collaborators include India Harville, Kayla Hamilton, JJ Omelagah, and Movement Research.
Program and application details are available at https://www.embracedbody.com/projects/how-we-move. All accepted How We Move participants will receive a $2,000 stipend and the program will cover access, travel, housing, and food costs for the June in-person intensive. Funding is also available for Personal Care Attendants.
Centered in the belief that our bodies should feel radically welcomed in all spaces, Embraced Body advances Disability Justice through inclusive performing arts, accessibility consulting, and anti-ableist education for all. Embraced Body is driven by a profound commitment to fostering accessibility and inclusivity for multiply marginalized Disabled individuals. By highlighting the interconnectedness of ableism with other forms of oppression and addressing these systemic inequalities head-on, they endeavor to dismantle oppressive structures and create a more equitable society for all.
Image credit Embraced Body